WZON plate has become overstuffed

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Based on the way The Sports Zone has been Joining some games In Progress, leaving some early, and totally ignoring others the last few weeks, it might be a good idea to switch the call letters from WZON to WJIP.

In the last couple months, WZON has:

tape-delayed the broadcast of two University of Maine men’s basketball games and bypassed another entirely with only periodic live reports on the game’s progress in favor of full coverage of Black Bear hockey;

passed up or joined several Boston Bruins and Celtics games in progress in order to carry NFL, high school, or college games;

left live coverage of the waning minutes of a New York Giants game to join a New England Patriots game just before kickoff;

bypassed Giants games when their starting time is the same as the Patriots’;

missed at least one Notre Dame football game due to coverage of high school or local college action.

And it doesn’t end there. In the coming weeks, the potential exists for WZON to:

shun full coverage of two more UMaine men’s basketball games that may conflict with Black Bear hockey games on Saturday, Dec. 28, and Saturday, March 1;

join in progress or bypass entirely more Bruins and Celtics games plus NFL playoff games due to time conflicts with local college and/or high school games.

The Sports Zone appears to have loaded a little too much on its programming plate.

Most diehard sports fans believe there’s no such thing as too much when it comes to sports. That pretty much sums up my philosophy.

But when a station bills itself as the home of the Boston Celtics or your Bruins connection or the official Black Bear basketball carrier, the basic premise is that all the games will be broadcast.

With the proliferation of various sportscasts offered by WZON, it has become almost impossible for it to carry all, or in some cases even 75 percent, of the games played by regional teams such as the Celtics, Bruins, and Black Bears.

Perhaps it’s time for station officials to step back and re-evaluate the cluttered sports programming schedule, expecially in light of the fact WZON may be the only bidder for UMaine sports radio rights.

What happens when WZON has to juggle men’s basketball, hockey, and women’s basketball over a full winter season along with high school and professional sports?

Some will say it’s better to provide teams some coverage rather than none at all. That may be true, but that strategy can also cause plenty of frustration and anger from fans of the sports that take a back seat to the “headliners.”

Obviously hard choices have to be made periodically at stations such as WZON. That’s understandable. But the sheer volume of sports programming “The Zone” has committed to has heaped on more hard choices than should have to be made.

With apologies to Abraham Lincoln – It’s true WZON can satisfy all its listeners some of the time and even satisfy some of them all the time, but it can’t satisfy all of them all the time.

In its laudable effort to offer a wide variety of sports coverage, WZON may have inadvertently created what most fans consider unthinkable when it comes to sports: Too much.

– Andrew Neff, BDN

The University of Maine women’s basketball team is off to a better start than it might appear and for three reasons that may seem strange – George Washington, James Madison, and Western Kentucky.

The Black Bears’ record is only 4-4, but three of the losses are to those strong teams.

Cindy Blodgett and Co. had their chances to win all three. They were competitive right to the end. It was only turnovers, free-throw shooting, or bad shots in the final moments which did the Black Bears in.

Those outcomes can all be attributed to nerves, and the best way to strengthen nerves in such situations is to be in them more and more often.

Early in the 1994-95 season was a victory over No. 10-ranked Alabama which signaled Maine’s ascension on the national basketball scene.

It’s because of that 75-73 victory, though, that similar wins have been hard to come by. You only get to be Cinderella once.

Coaches remember when something like that happens and they don’t take you as lightly as they might once have. Victories then become a matter of hard work and doing everything right.

Maine was blown out by No. 1-ranked Connecticut in the first round of the 1995 NCAA Tournament, and lost in the opening round last year to George Washington. But their performance was much better against GW.

Easy wins where a team gets away with sloppy play, the type of play which can become ingrained and hard to change the longer it continues, does no team any good.

While the Black Bears haven’t done everything right, as evidenced by the three losses to the big teams this year, they appear to be getting closer. Their play is being sharpened by playing these tough games early.

Those early losses will come back to pay big dividends when the Bears play the bulk of their America East schedule in the coming months. The conference games will seem easier because the Black Bears’ play has been honed.

Such honing can pay big dividends if a third try at the NCAA Tournament comes.

– Dave Barber, BDN